Sunday, December 19, 2010

Handel Organ Concertos

This week I present several recordings of Handel organ concertos by two British organists that, decidedly, represent a bygone style of playing this music! Featured first is George Dorrington Cunningham (1878-1948), who went by the rather unfortunate initials "G. D." (I wonder if they had the same connotations in those days?), and who was appointed Birmingham City Organist in 1924. E. Power Biggs was one of his students. His recordings of two Handel concerti, with George Weldon and the City of Birmingham Orchestra, were made late in his life, and exhibit a considerably beefier style of Handel playing than we are accustomed to today, with a big organ sound and a full symphonic-sized string orchestra accompaniment:

If the Cunningham performances seem oversized, they're positively sedate compared to what follows. Cunningham's student, and successor as Birmingham City Organist, was George Thalben-Ball (1896-1987), who here turns in a performance of Handel's Organ Concerto in B-Flat, Op. 7, No. 3, as arranged and orchestrated by Sir Henry J. Wood. Thalben-Ball's playing is flamboyant, to say the least, and the Wood orchestration, for full symphony orchestra with brass and percussion, is certainly anachronistic but it's great fun! Handel's original ordering of the movements is also altered, and this perfomance interpolates not only the Minuet from "Berenice" but also a big cadenza by Thalben-Ball that takes up most of the last side.

Sir Henry Wood, of course, was a great conductor who left a fair number of recordings himself (though his recorded legacy hardly does him justice), and among these were several featuring Baroque music. One of the very first uploads I ever offered, way back in the spring of 2007, was one of him conducting two Bach Brandenburg Concertos, and this is still available for those who may have missed it the first time:

4 comments:

Thank you! These are very important recordings. They've been on CD but long unavailable and in bad restorations. If you happen to have some Columbia 78s of the great Dutch player Anthon van der Horst at Central Methodist Church (Handel, Widor, Sweelinck, Pachelbel), I would love to hear these rarities. I've mentioned them on other blogs, just in case somebody has one or more.

About Me

I have been collecting 78-rpm records since childhood. In 2007, I began a hobby of transferring some of these to digital files, and in 2010 I established this blog as a forum for sharing these with a wider audience.

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